Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a liquid accommodating container, a liquid ejecting device and a liquid introducing method that can be widely applied to an inkjet print head that can eject ink and an inkjet printing apparatus provided with the inkjet print head, for example.
Description of the Related Art
In a liquid ejecting device that ejects liquids (hereinafter called ink as well) from nozzles provided in a liquid ejecting head for printing, there are some cases where there occurs a defect that foreign particles such as paper powder or air bubbles enter into the nozzle to cause an ejection failure or disturbance of an image. In addition, when a liquid ejecting device is not used for a long period of time, viscosity as well as concentration of ink in the nozzle increase. The reason for this is that water components of the ink in the nozzle evaporate from the nozzle. In some cases the ink the viscosity of which has increased (thicker ink) causes clogging in the nozzle. When the thicker ink causes the clogging in the nozzle, there possibly occurs non-ejection that ink is not ejected from the nozzle.
Therefore for the purpose of removal of air bubbles and foreign particles in the nozzle, prevention of occurrence in clogging to be caused by the thicker ink and elimination of the occurred clogging, there is known a technology in regard to a recovery process of recovering the ink ejecting state back to an initial state by ejecting or forcibly sucking ink from the nozzle. The ink (waste ink) ejected or sucked in this recovery process is reserved through a recovery mechanism in a waste ink tank provided in the liquid ejecting device. In this case, when a capacity of the waste ink tank is small, the waste ink possibly leaks out of the waste ink tank. Therefore the waste ink tank needs to have a sufficient capacity. However, following a recent demand for downsizing the device (space-saving), it is difficult to dispose the waste ink tank having a sufficient capacity.
For this reason, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2002-52741 discloses an inkjet printing apparatus provided with an ink tank that has an opening through which the waste ink ejected from a print head is received in the ink tank.
In addition, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2000-141704 discloses a collection mechanism of causing the ink collected from a print head to be absorbed by an absorbing element in an ink tank.
However, in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2002-52741 and Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2000-141704, the waste ink collected in the ink tank is mixed with ink having not been used for printing, which will be again used for printing. Since the waste ink becomes thicker in viscosity or contains foreign particles mixed therein, supply of the ink in which the waste ink is mixed to the print head possibly causes the clogging of the nozzle.